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- the_real_jessica
- Rep: 22
Re: A text of mine, go on critics
Mothers in law.
Fascinating subject for many women, and surely less for the men who need to face their little boy's habits. Mothers in law. How to describe them? Difficult. Some are very normal but others much more tyrannical.
Negative aspect, I only had dreadful and possessive mothers in law. But I hope that you will be able to recognize the deposited trademark «pure bloody nuisance" in this text.
How many women fall for the childlike charm of a man? Many. Including myself. I do not escape the rule. But each time, I have this tendency to forget that behind this childish dimension also lies some woman's child. And what woman! One who made a success in futilizing a 30 year old man!
The first time I met mine, she looked at me like a curious animal.
I don't think she realised, but should I have been in an animal fair, there would have been no difference.
She idealizes her son, who succeeded better than his brothers and pairs.
What a catastrophe!!!
The little mom's darling does what he wants and does scene after scene.
He would really love to tell her the truth about how much she always annoyed him, but he has such a loving mother that he forever glued himself to the idea of never hurting her feelings.
She has all the power over his ideas as well as over his shirts, shirts that I am
not capable to iron well according to him, this is why he irons them himself!
Did you ever have your clothes washed separately by your in law? A machine for him, a machine for you? I have !
A machine of my white separated from his white.
And oh surprise, my white came out all blue because she (inopportunely well on) slipped a very new blue tablecloth in there !
But the mother in law is such an accomplished woman. She made a success of her family, her couple, she manages her house perfectly well and holds on leash her dog as well as her husband!!
The poor 'outsider' will only be accepted into this inferno when she will possibly have given birth to two children, boys preferably, simply because her mother in law misses her little boys so much.
This way, she can cuddle babies again and return the small ones to the new mother just like her own sons, whereas you or I already had so much difficulty maturing one of her small darlings.
But don't over worry, the mother in law is not tender with a son in law either, because she analyses him in all aspects possible, from his bank account to his IQ, with a little detour to his height and questions on his sperm's good health!
Fantastic mother in law who will cry of admiration in front of his masculine car only to ask him fast to change it once he has become the father of her descendance !
The sentence that kills almost all her good charms is when, while he's having a Sunday diner, she asks in front of everyone ' These socks, they are white, aren't they ?'
How nice of his mother in law to make everyone notice that his trousers were a bit short and that his lack of taste is too enormous to be French !
His mother in law, so happy to have a perfect son in law, but who is perfectly dumb too. She suddenly feels this urge to breastfeed him. Yes, she understood that he couldn't help himself and that her poor daughter had one more child to care for at home.
Of course, when this woman finds a pair of unknown shoes in the house, she gets into a black rage, borrows a Kalashnikov from the neighbour and step by step, moves towards her son's bedroom, surprising the lovers faulting, grasping on the poor girl's pair of panties like a prize and throwing this one out with kicks in the butt, before excusing herself a month later, after she'd found out she was the major's daughter, which wasn't this bad after all ?
Okay, I will stop here on 'difficult' experiences.
There are also fantastic mothers in law, superwomen of tenderness and of pizzas to bring back home.
The one we get on so well with that we go shopping together, but without her son, who, in the meantime, is profoundly bored and watching TV alone.
The same super mother in law we can tell all our sweetie's secrets when she'd promised to keep them private.
The same woman who can laugh out loud in front of a cappuccino, about friends of her desperately needing facial works!!!
A mother in law? A problem? Or just the way to fit into someone else's family?
It's ever so nice to be able to cook, prepare, clean with the woman we call 'xxxx' instead of 'mother' since she asked.
Not many people speak to xxxx now the kids are grown ups, so she likes the attention.
It's ever so calm; people are sitting up so straight.
What a pleasure to fit in so well into a living room full of wax dolls freezed by their egos.
Re: A text of mine, go on critics
Mothers in law.
Fascinating subject for many women, and surely less for the men who need to face their little boys' habits. Mothers in law. How to describe them? Difficult. Some are very normal but others much more tyrannical.
Quick to the point, setting up certain expectations to the reader on the grounds the text may cover. You might want to reconsider the part 'much more tyrannical'. Currently, it reads as if all mothers in law are tyrannical to a distinguishable degree by default (even the "very" normal ones).
Negative aspect, I only had dreadful and possessive mothers in law. But I hope that you will be able to recognize the deposited trademark «pure bloody nuisance" in this text.
How many women fall for the childlike charm of a man? Many. Including myself. I do not escape the rule. But each time, I have this tendency to forget that behind this childish dimension also lies some woman's child. And what woman! One who made a success in futilizing a 30 year old man!
I might rework the two paragraphs into one, as you're now jumping back and forth between personal experiences and generalized ideas. How about starting with a more general area of bad mother in laws and with every childlike man having (apparently quite often) a one bad mutha - then digging further by handing your personal testimony on the matter. At this point, the readers interest has already been raised, but the pacing of the text gets a little jumpy.
Also, you suggest you will have a personal viewpoint on the subject, even though it may be a biased one, as you do not seem to have experienced a 'good' or a 'normal' mother in law. Therefore you should remain wary before jumping into more generalized conclusions.
The first time I met mine, she looked at me like a curious animal.
I don't think she realised, but should I have been in an animal fair, there would have been no difference.
She idealizes her son, who succeeded better than his brothers and pairs.
What a catastrophe!!!
So which was the curious animal, your mother in law or you? Really, the first time I read that sentence, I got the idea that the mom was like that old golden retriever my aunt had, always looking at us with a bit blank, phlegmatic stare. Of course only certain kind of people can match the deep, liquid eyes of a worn-out canine, to which group I was willing to include your mother in law.
Because of this, the catastrophe bit was a bit lost to me. The animal fair metaphor is a good one, as it places you (the would-be spouse) in a situation where you'd be like a pet dog, all groomed up and ready to face the trials of the jury, evaluated on the grounds of how well you'll go through the motions and how good you manage look.
The little mom's darling does what he wants and does scene after scene. (time after time?)
He would really love to tell her the truth about how much she always annoyed him, but he has such a loving mother that he forever glued himself to the idea of never hurting her feelings.
She has all the power over his ideas as well as over his shirts, shirts that I am
not capable to iron well according to him, this is why he irons them himself!
'He would really...' the whole sentence is a bit jumbled. Rephrase and use separate sentences if necessary. The shirts make an excellent real-life anecdote, and you do use them to symbolize his view of the world.
[Have] you ever [had] your clothes washed separately by your in law? A machine for him, a machine for you? I have !
A machine of my white separated from his white.
And oh surprise, my white came out all blue because she (inopportunely well on) slipped a very new blue tablecloth in there !
So you got the blues. A pretty effective way to figuratively describe how the mother in law (apparently, near-immediately) contributed to a rift between the two of you early on. Or I'm just reading it all wrong.
But the mother in law [was] such an accomplished woman. She made a success of her family, her couple (marriage?), she manages her house perfectly well and holds on leash her dog as well as her husband!!
'holds on a leash...' I realize what you're going for here, but currently it can be interpreted as if she and her husband both hold the family dog on a leash. I'd go further in using the idiom, for example something in the vein of the man is kept in an even shorter leash than the dog.
The poor 'outsider' will only be accepted into this inferno when she will possibly have given birth to two children, boys preferably, simply because her mother in law misses her little boys so much.
This way, she can cuddle babies again and return the small ones to the new mother just like her own sons, whereas you or I already had so much difficulty maturing one of her small darlings.
'return the small ones to the new mother just like her own sons...' Did the mother in law used to give her own sons away to someone else when he'd grown tired to them? If you mean that by relationship and parenthood, the son grows apart from the mother to a point where the mother rather directs her attention towards her grandchildren than her own offspring, it'd help if you'd break it down a little, as there's a number of ideas introduced in one sentence.
Also, the picture that begins to form at this point is that of a person who could be said to materialize her immediate family members to a degree. To be blunt, the daughter in law is someone who is acquired primarily for breeding purposes, while the resulting children evoke the idea of puppies which are certainly fun to be around with, but the day-to-day reality of looking after them is enough to have anyone question their cuddliness from time to time.
Since you've already established the dog show metaphor early on and compared the husband to a lap dog, I see no reason why dog terminology couldn't be used to further illustrate the power structure within the family.
But don't over worry, the mother in law is not tender with a son in law either, because she analyses him in all aspects possible, from his bank account to his IQ, with a little detour to his height and questions on his sperm's good health!
Fantastic mother in law who will cry of admiration in front of his masculine car only to ask him fast to change it once he has become the father of her descendance !
Well, she's not misogynistic them, but did she have daughters? So far, I've only counted two sons. But if the son in law has a sports car, does the mom want him to change for a Hyundai or a family wagon? Would make sense if the car would represent the man's virility and later on, stability and dedication. I'm saying this because the whole idea of the car appears significant and therefore it's rather vital to know what'll come next.
The sentence that kills almost all her good charms is when, while he's having a Sunday diner, she asks in front of everyone ' These socks, they are white, aren't they ?'
How nice of his mother in law to make everyone notice that his trousers were a bit short and that his lack of taste is too enormous to be French !His mother in law, so happy to have a perfect son in law, but who is perfectly dumb too. She suddenly feels this urge to breastfeed him. Yes, she understood that he couldn't help himself and that her poor daughter had one more child to care for at home.
The breastfeeding thing left me a bit aloof for a while. I can see the mom and the son in law having an affair (or random sexual encounter), but the entire phrasing is also alluding to a more Oedipal relationship, and it's as if the son in laws own mother never had enough time to breastfeed him back in the day and while witnessing his children receive more attention from the spouse than he does, the son in law reverts to the matriarch for deliverance.
Of course, when this woman finds a pair of unknown shoes in the house, she gets into a black rage, borrows a Kalashnikov from the neighbour and step by step, moves towards her son's bedroom, surprising the lovers faulting, grasping on the poor girl's pair of panties like a prize and throwing this one out with kicks in the butt, before excusing herself a month later, after she'd found out she was the major's daughter, which wasn't this bad after all ?
Are these double standards related to custody issues in the case of separation? I mean, it's okay for the son in law to have an extra-marital affair (at least with the grand mother herself), while the son is forbidden from such ventures. If the mayor's daughter angle is left out of the equation, this is a moment where the mother takes sides with her daughter in law over her own son, which is rather significant in itself.
Okay, I will stop here on 'difficult' experiences.
There are also fantastic mothers in law, superwomen of tenderness and of pizzas to bring back home.
The one we get on so well with that we go shopping together, but without her son, who, in the meantime, is profoundly bored and watching TV alone.
The same super mother in law we can tell all our sweetie's secrets when she'd promised to keep them private.The same woman who can laugh out loud in front of a cappuccino, about friends of her desperately needing facial works!!!
It's a good thing you include a mention of more easygoing mother in laws, which should bring in some perspective to the matter.
A mother in law? A problem? Or just the way to fit into someone else's family?
It's ever so nice to be able to cook, prepare, clean with the woman we call 'xxxx' instead of 'mother' since she asked.
Not many people speak to xxxx now the kids are grown ups, so she likes the attention.It's ever so calm; people are sitting up so straight.
What a pleasure to fit in so well into a living room full of wax dolls freezed by their egos.
In closing, you imply that you still keep tabs with this mother in law after she finally got what was coming to her, alienating most of her former allies and subordinates and losing much of the power she once had over the family unit. In that case, your final note seems to be that mother in laws cease to be an issue only when they find themselves in a position in which they need the company of a daughter in law and have grown out of the role of looking over the families of their own children. Matriarchs dethroned, if you may.
You do seem to have a knack for figurative expression, though I must say that the text could use a bit more meat into it. While the everyday events you list can be seen to contain symbolic layers, they would benefit if you'd use them to open up the issues you'd like to raise to the reader, rather than to vaguely present them in the hopes that all others can relate to your viewpoints on a figurative level alone.
Lastly, I'm a bit curious. Did you write the original text in French and then translate it to English?
Re: A text of mine, go on critics
like sic said some symolism is a bit off to me...and additionally it should be "frozen" not "freezed"
but is this woman a real person or a caracature? if she is real...no offense but she needs some help 
my mother in law is fantastic i love her to death
- the_real_jessica
- Rep: 22
Re: A text of mine, go on critics
Mothers in law.
Fascinating subject for many women, and surely less for the men who need to face their little boys' habits. Mothers in law. How to describe them? Difficult. Some are very normal but others much more tyrannical.[/i]
Quick to the point, setting up certain expectations to the reader on the grounds the text may cover. You might want to reconsider the part 'much more tyrannical'. Currently, it reads as if all mothers in law are tyrannical to a distinguishable degree by default (even the "very" normal ones).
Right, got that. Although, i know french mothers in law are pretty possessive of their children usually, which is why it's interesting to see how the text is perceived outside of france.
Negative aspect, I only had dreadful and possessive mothers in law. But I hope that you will be able to recognize the deposited trademark «pure bloody nuisance" in this text.
How many women fall for the childlike charm of a man? Many. Including myself. I do not escape the rule. But each time, I have this tendency to forget that behind this childish dimension also lies some woman's child. And what woman! One who made a success in futilizing a 30 year old man!
I might rework the two paragraphs into one, as you're now jumping back and forth between personal experiences and generalized ideas. How about starting with a more general area of bad mother in laws and with every childlike man having (apparently quite often) a one bad mutha - then digging further by handing your personal testimony on the matter. At this point, the readers interest has already been raised, but the pacing of the text gets a little jumpy.
Also, you suggest you will have a personal viewpoint on the subject, even though it may be a biased one, as you do not seem to have experienced a 'good' or a 'normal' mother in law. Therefore you should remain wary before jumping into more generalized conclusions.
Well, it is not supposed to be a generalised view, that's exactly the contrary of what i'd like, this is very much a " me" text. And also, there is some sarcasm into it, which is why i need to find the right phrasing so people understand some is 1st degree but not of it ?
The first time I met mine, she looked at me like a curious animal.
I don't think she realised, but should I have been in an animal fair, there would have been no difference.
She idealizes her son, who succeeded better than his brothers and pairs.
What a catastrophe!!!
So which was the curious animal, your mother in law or you? Really, the first time I read that sentence, I got the idea that the mom was like that old golden retriever my aunt had, always looking at us with a bit blank, phlegmatic stare. Of course only certain kind of people can match the deep, liquid eyes of a worn-out canine, to which group I was willing to include your mother in law.
She has blank eyes, she is the curious animal to me, but i am even more curious to her
Because of this, the catastrophe bit was a bit lost to me.
What i meant to say is that idealising someone, a stranger or your own blood is not a good thing, she does her son harm on putting him on a pedestal like she does and since he succeeds professionally, like he is not poor or bad looking like his brothers, it's even worse ?
The animal fair metaphor is a good one, as it places you (the would-be spouse) in a situation where you'd be like a pet dog, all groomed up and ready to face the trials of the jury, evaluated on the grounds of how well you'll go through the motions and how good you manage look.
thanks, any positive makes me want to go forward, so i'll keep this bit then
The little mom's darling does what he wants and does scene after scene. (time after time?)
He would really love to tell her the truth about how much she always annoyed him, but he has such a loving mother that he forever glued himself to the idea of never hurting her feelings.
She has all the power over his ideas as well as over his shirts, shirts that I am
not capable to iron well according to him, this is why he irons them himself!
'He would really...' the whole sentence is a bit jumbled. Rephrase and use separate sentences if necessary. The shirts make an excellent real-life anecdote, and you do use them to symbolize his view of the world.
As i said, i need help rephrasing, but i like short percuting sentences, i like sarcasm and straight to the point funny ? Thanks, i guess i use symbolism like i breathe ? only just noticed, no piss take.
[Have] you ever [had] your clothes washed separately by your in law? A machine for him, a machine for you? I have !
A machine of my white separated from his white.
And oh surprise, my white came out all blue because she (inopportunely well on) slipped a very new blue tablecloth in there !
So you got the blues. A pretty effective way to figuratively describe how the mother in law (apparently, near-immediately) contributed to a rift between the two of you early on. Or I'm just reading it all wrong.
To talk a little bit more about it, it was my first ever week end at the parents of the man who was to become my worst nightmare. For some unknown reason, after a night there, his mother rumbled through my suitcase, got all my whites out, including knickers/panties and brought all the white downstairs to the washing room. She had taken her son's shirts too, white shirts. Anyway, as one can imagine, two shirts, one T shirt and one pair of panties doesn't fill a whole washing machine, i know it and a women who has had three sons and a husband, especially working on a farm, knows it too.
But she separated his two shirts from my T shirt and one pair of panties, she did two separate washings.
And again, a woman who has done more washing machines in her life than most, puts a brand new tablecloth, BRIGHT BLUE, in the machine with MY clothes. Of course, they came out blue.
He never believed she'd done it purposely, even though the machine wasn't full with the tablecloth and he never questionned why she had separated the washing or most important, why she thought she'd had the right to go through my personal items in the first place.
But the mother in law [was] such an accomplished woman. She made a success of her family, her couple (marriage?), she manages her house perfectly well and holds on leash her dog as well as her husband!!
'holds on a leash...' I realize what you're going for here, but currently it can be interpreted as if she and her husband both hold the family dog on a leash. I'd go further in using the idiom, for example something in the vein of the man is kept in an even shorter leash than the dog.
I aimed to say she is a general who controls everything and everyone and that her husband is just as much on a leash than the dog is ?
The poor 'outsider' will only be accepted into this inferno when she will possibly have given birth to two children, boys preferably, simply because her mother in law misses her little boys so much.
This way, she can cuddle babies again and return the small ones to the new mother just like her own sons, whereas you or I already had so much difficulty maturing one of her small darlings.
'return the small ones to the new mother just like her own sons...'
Did the mother in law used to give her own sons away to someone else when he'd grown tired to them? If you mean that by relationship and parenthood, the son grows apart from the mother to a point where the mother rather directs her attention towards her grandchildren than her own offspring, it'd help if you'd break it down a little, as there's a number of ideas introduced in one sentence.
Yes, she did. The way they function is everyone is into everyone else's business, this includes kids and who takes care of them. Grandparent's influence in french families is sometimes more important than the parents themselves, it's pretty frightening. And no, i realise i wrote it just wrong there, what i meant was that once the babies have been cared for by the grandmother, they turn out to be like the father, which is not good because as a wife, you have already tried hard to better him without having his mother ruin your own kids ?
Also, the picture that begins to form at this point is that of a person who could be said to materialize her immediate family members to a degree. To be blunt, the daughter in law is someone who is acquired primarily for breeding purposes, while the resulting children evoke the idea of puppies which are certainly fun to be around with, but the day-to-day reality of looking after them is enough to have anyone question their cuddliness from time to time.
That's about right and you've actually made me think of something that needs adding, because it's not just breeding but materiality too, because they would not choose a girl who doesn't bring them ( through their sons) some form of material satisfaction so their sons can keep on acting like loonies while the wife works her ass off to pay most important things. And here is why they hate me, i saw it come and decided to stop working 8 months after meeting him because i thought i was being used. A feeling. I could only start to see the truth and a bigger picture 4 years ago, but couldn't actually put words until recently
Since you've already established the dog show metaphor early on and compared the husband to a lap dog, I see no reason why dog terminology couldn't be used to further illustrate the power structure within the family.
Ok
But don't over worry, the mother in law is not tender with a son in law either, because she analyses him in all aspects possible, from his bank account to his IQ, with a little detour to his height and questions on his sperm's good health!
Fantastic mother in law who will cry of admiration in front of his masculine car only to ask him fast to change it once he has become the father of her descendance !
Well, she's not misogynistic them, but did she have daughters? So far, I've only counted two sons. But if the son in law has a sports car, does the mom want him to change for a Hyundai or a family wagon? Would make sense if the car would represent the man's virility and later on, stability and dedication. I'm saying this because the whole idea of the car appears significant and therefore it's rather vital to know what'll come next.
I should have indicated a change of woman, this one if my own mother and how she acted around my boyfriends. Basically, she was only interested in them if they earnt enough, but was the first one to cry out when asshole kept his sports car instead of having a family car.
The sentence that kills almost all her good charms is when, while he's having a Sunday diner, she asks in front of everyone ' These socks, they are white, aren't they ?'
How nice of his mother in law to make everyone notice that his trousers were a bit short and that his lack of taste is too enormous to be French !His mother in law, so happy to have a perfect son in law, but who is perfectly dumb too. She suddenly feels this urge to breastfeed him. Yes, she understood that he couldn't help himself and that her poor daughter had one more child to care for at home.
The breastfeeding thing left me a bit aloof for a while. I can see the mom and the son in law having an affair (or random sexual encounter), but the entire phrasing is also alluding to a more Oedipal relationship, and it's as if the son in laws own mother never had enough time to breastfeed him back in the day and while witnessing his children receive more attention from the spouse than he does, the son in law reverts to the matriarch for deliverance.
My mother and my worst nightmare did have an affair. And yes, there is also a part of the " missing a mother so using her mother" and also a part where i think a lot of grown up women see men as big kids and feel maternal towards them, an urge to mother them, since women are usually more maternal towards boys than girls, so a son in law is like having a son or another son, i think a lot of women love having sons in law, and there is always the attraction factor, the seduction factor, they also like to play games even though most times, the game is an innocent one for everyone.
Of course, when this woman finds a pair of unknown shoes in the house, she gets into a black rage, borrows a Kalashnikov from the neighbour and step by step, moves towards her son's bedroom, surprising the lovers faulting, grasping on the poor girl's pair of panties like a prize and throwing this one out with kicks in the butt, before excusing herself a month later, after she'd found out she was the major's daughter, which wasn't this bad after all ?
Are these double standards related to custody issues in the case of separation? I mean, it's okay for the son in law to have an extra-marital affair (at least with the grand mother herself), while the son is forbidden from such ventures. If the mayor's daughter angle is left out of the equation, this is a moment where the mother takes sides with her daughter in law over her own son, which is rather significant in itself.I'll think this one over
Okay, I will stop here on 'difficult' experiences.
There are also fantastic mothers in law, superwomen of tenderness and of pizzas to bring back home.
The one we get on so well with that we go shopping together, but without her son, who, in the meantime, is profoundly bored and watching TV alone.
The same super mother in law we can tell all our sweetie's secrets when she'd promised to keep them private.The same woman who can laugh out loud in front of a cappuccino, about friends of her desperately needing facial works!!!
It's a good thing you include a mention of more easygoing mother in laws, which should bring in some perspective to the matter.
Not all of them are witches 
A mother in law? A problem? Or just the way to fit into someone else's family?
It's ever so nice to be able to cook, prepare, clean with the woman we call 'xxxx' instead of 'mother' since she asked.
Not many people speak to xxxx now the kids are grown ups, so she likes the attention.It's ever so calm; people are sitting up so straight.
What a pleasure to fit in so well into a living room full of wax dolls freezed by their egos.
In closing, you imply that you still keep tabs with this mother in law after she finally got what was coming to her, alienating most of her former allies and subordinates and losing much of the power she once had over the family unit. In that case, your final note seems to be that mother in laws cease to be an issue only when they find themselves in a position in which they need the company of a daughter in law and have grown out of the role of looking over the families of their own children. Matriarchs dethroned, if you may.
I guess this is what i'm saying. At least concerning the ones who have power issues.
You do seem to have a knack for figurative expression, though I must say that the text could use a bit more meat into it.
I agree, this was a first draft, and you know, when it all comes out of your head at once, you don't really know what's come out and me re reading it always gives the same result, i can't bloody see a thing lol !!!
While the everyday events you list can be seen to contain symbolic layers, they would benefit if you'd use them to open up the issues you'd like to raise to the reader, rather than to vaguely present them in the hopes that all others can relate to your viewpoints on a figurative level alone.
I agree, but i can't do it alone ?????
Lastly, I'm a bit curious. Did you write the original text in French and then translate it to English?
erm...yes...although i went from a confused french to an even more confused english lol !!!!
- the_real_jessica
- Rep: 22
Re: A text of mine, go on critics
like sic said some symolism is a bit off to me...and additionally it should be "frozen" not "freezed"
but is this woman a real person or a caracature? if she is real...no offense but she needs some help
my mother in law is fantastic i love her to death
Sic has pointed out bits i need working on...
And she is 250% reeal..and that's not even a third of the woman's evils..
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